Chapter 10
CHAPTER X. I have frequently heard it asserted by white people, and can truly say from my own experience that the time at which parents take the most satisfaction and comfort with their families is when their children are young, incapable of providing for their own wants, and are about the fireside, where they can be daily observed and instructed.
Few mothers, perhaps, have had less trouble with their children during their minority than myself. In general my children were friendly to each other, and it was very seldom that I knew them to have the least difference or quarrel. So far, indeed, were they from rendering themselves or me uncomfortable, that I considered myself
happy, more so than commonly falls to the lot of parents, especially to women. My happiness in this respect, however, was not without alloy, for my son Thomas, from some cause unknown to me, from the time he was a small lad, always called his brother John a witch, which was the cause, as they grew towards manhood, of frequent and severe quarrels between them, and gave me much trouble and anxiety for their safety.
After Thomas and John arrived to manhood, in addition to the former charge, John got two wives, with whom he lived till the time of his death, although polygamy was tolerated in our tribe, Thomas considered it a violation of good and wholesome rules in society, intending directly to destroy that friendly social intercourse and love that ought to be the happy result of matrimony and chastity.
Consequently, he frequently reprimanded John by telling him that his conduct was beneath the dignity and inconsistent with the principles of good Indians, indecent and unbecoming a gentleman, and as he never could reconcile himself to it, he was frequently, almost constantly, when they were together, talking to him on the same subject. John always resented such reprimand and reproof with a great degree of passion, though they
never quarrelled unless Thomas was intoxicated. In his fits of drunkenness Thomas seemed to lose all his natural reason and to conduct man without regard to relatives, decency or propriety. At such times he often threatened to take my life for having raised a witch, as he called John, and has gone so far as to raise his tomahawk to split my head.
He however never struck me, but on John's account he struck Hayokatu, and thereby excited in John a high degree of indignation which was extinguished only by blood. For a number of years their difficulties and consequent unhappiness continued and rather increased, continually exciting in my breast the most fearful apprehensions and greatest anxiety for their safety.
With tears in my eyes I advised them to become reconciled to each other and to be friendly, told them the consequences of their continuing to cherish so much malignity and malice that it would end in their destruction the disgrace of their families and bring me down to the grave. No one can conceive of the constant trouble that I daily endured on their account, on
the account of my two oldest sons, whom I loved equally and with all the feelings and affection of a tender mother stimulated by an anxious concern for their fate. Parents, mothers especially, will love their children though ever so unkind and disobedient. Their eyes of compassion, of real sentimental affection will be involuntarily extended after them in their greatest excesses of iniquity, and those fine filaments of consanguinity
which gently entwine themselves around the heart where filial love and parental care is equal will be lengthened and enlarged to cord seemingly of sufficient strength to reach and reclaim the wanderer. I know that such exercises are frequently unavailing, but notwithstanding their ultimate failure it still remains true and ever will that the love of a parent for a disobedient child will
increase and grow more and more ardent so long as a hope of its reformation is capable of stimulating a disappointed breast. My advice and expostulations with my sons were abortive, and year after year their disaffection for each other increased. At length Thomas came to my house on the first day of July 1811 in my absence, somewhat intoxicated,
where he found John, with whom he immediately commenced to quarrel on their old subjects of difference. John's anger became desperate. He caught Thomas by the hair of his head, dragged him out at the door, and there killed him by a blow which he gave him on the head with his tomahawk.
I returned soon after and found my son lifeless at the door, on the spot where he was killed. No one can judge of my feelings on seeing this mournful spectacle, and what greatly added to my distress was the fact that he had fallen by the murderous hand of his brother. I felt my situation unsupportable. Having passed through various scenes of trouble of the most cruel and trying kind, I had hoped
to spend my few remaining days in quietude, and to die in peace surrounded by my family. This fatal event, however, seemed to be a stream of woe poured into my cup of afflictions, filling it even to overflowing and blasting all my prospects. As soon as I had recovered a little from the shock which I felt at the sight of my departed son, and some of my neighbors had come in to assist in taking care of the corpse, I
hired Shanks, an Indian, to go to Buffalo, and carry the sorrowful news of Thomas's death to our friends at that place, and request the chiefs to hold a council, and dispose of John as they should think proper. Shanks set out on his errand immediately, and John, fearing that he should be apprehended and punished for the crime he had committed, at the same time went off towards Canidae.
Thomas was decently interred in its style corresponding with his rank. The chiefs soon assembled in council on the trial of John, and after having seriously examined the matter according to their laws, justified his conduct and acquitted him. They considered Thomas to have been the first transgressor, and that for the abuses which he had offered he had merited from John the treatment that he had received.
John on learning the decision of the council returned to his family. Thomas, except when intoxicated, which was not frequent, was a kind and tender child, willing to assist me in my labor, and to remove every obstacle to my comfort. His natural abilities were said to be of a superior caste, and he soared above the trifling subjects of revenge, which are common amongst Indians as being far beneath his attention.
In his childish and boyish days his natural turn was to practice in the art of war, though he despised the cruelties that the warriors inflicted upon their subjugated enemies. He was manly in his deportment, courageous and active, and commanded respect. Though he appeared well pleased with peace, he was cunning in Indian warfare and succeeded to admiration in the execution of his plans.
At the age of fourteen or fifteen years he went into the war with manly fortitude, armed with a tomahawk and scalping knife, and when he returned brought one white man a prisoner, whom he had taken with his own hands on the west branch of the Susquehanna River. It so happened that as he was looking out for his enemies he discovered two men boiling sap in the woods.
He watched them unperceived till dark, when he advanced with a noiseless step to where they were standing, caught one of them before they were apprised of danger, and conducted him to the camp. He was well treated while a prisoner, and redeemed at the close of the war. At the time God Jesus Taguilla gave me liberty to go to my friends, Thomas was anxious to
go with me, but as I have before observed the chiefs would not suffer him to leave them on the account of his courage and skill in war, expecting that they should need his assistance. He was a great counsellor and a chief when quite young, and in the last capacity went two or three times to Philadelphia to assist in making treaties with the people of the States.
Thomas had four wives, by whom he had eight children. Smith Jemison, his second son by his last wife, who is at this time twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age, went to Dartmouth College in the spring of 1816 for the purpose of receiving a good education, where it was said that he was an industrious scholar and made great proficiency in the study of the different branches to which he attended.
Having spent two years at that institution, he returned in the winter of 1818, and is now at Buffalo, where I have understood that he contemplates commencing the study of medicine as a profession. Thomas at the time he was killed was a few moons over fifty-two years old, and John was forty-eight.
As he was naturally good-natured and possessed a friendly disposition, he would not have come to so untimely an end had it not been for his intemperance. He fell a victim to the use of ardent spirits, a poison that will soon exterminate the Indian tribes in this part of the country, and leave their names without a root or branch. The thought is melancholy, but no arguments, no examples, however persuasive or impressive,
are sufficient to deter an Indian for an hour from taking the potent draft, which he knows at the time will derange his faculties, reduce him to a level with the beasts, or deprive him of life.
